August Hughes looked at his hands. “No reason. Thought she’d like it. You can tell a lot about someone by the carousel animal they get on. Rooster. Stork. Frog. Zebra. Most people, they get on the jumping horses, the dragon, the lion, the tiger—you know, the classics. We got two ostriches on that carousel. Some kids, they cry when their moms try to set them on one. They want to ride on the dragon. Some kids, they go right to the ostriches. They have secret names for them. You see them whisper in their ears. Those are the kids with heart. I thought she was one of them.”

“My dad’s a drinker,” Philip said.

“I drink beer,” August said, looking up. “Just enough. Not more.”

Archie was forty-one and his whole body hurt most of the time. He couldn’t carry his kids more than a few blocks. This old man, he’d managed to move a body in the dark, after a few beers? Dead bodies were a lot harder to move than most people thought. There was a reason people talked about “deadweight.” Dead people weren’t any heavier than they were when they were alive. But it felt like it. “You picked up that girl, got her over the fence, carried her a hundred feet, and got her up on the carousel?” Archie asked. “By yourself?”

“I didn’t say I did it quick,” the old man said.

“Dad’s strong,” Philip said. “He still goes to the gym every day. He boxed in the army. Then worked at the shipyards.” He patted his father’s hand. “The roller rink was destroyed back in ’48, and after that they put the floor up on pontoons. My dad, he was working at the park during the Christmas flood of ’64. Saw the brown water coming in, and he cut the floor loose from supports with a chainsaw. Saved the roller rink.”

“Nineteen-forty-eight,” Archie said. “That was the Vanport flood, right?”

The elder Hughes nodded. “Water had to go somewhere, once it washed away the town. The Willamette rose fifteen feet. The park was underwater for thirty days, trees dead, rides warped. Course, I didn’t work there then.”

“You weren’t supposed to be there on Sunday night, either,” Archie said. He had seen the schedule for that week. “So what were you doing at the park?” he asked.

“I go there a lot at night in the winter,” August said. “Place is closed. Don’t want anyone getting into things, getting into trouble. Kids jump the fence and fool around. I know them all. I know all their parents.”

It was a hunch. Nothing more. Archie had the case file in front of him. He opened it and took out the hospital surveillance image of the boy and pushed it over to August Hughes.

“Have you seen this kid?” Archie asked him.

Philip Hughes leaned forward. “Is that the boy on the news?”